Trump would be 'delusional' to not fear RFK Jr. gambit 'boomerang' on him: GOP strategists

The Trump campaign worked as hard as they could for months to elevate environmental attorney and longtime conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in the hope he would poach votes from President Joe Biden.

Now, some allies of the former president are terrified the opposite will happen.

According to Politico, "Democrats have been on the defensive over the renegade Kennedy, with Biden surrogates warning openly about the effect Kennedy could have on the election and the Democratic National Committee going so far as to set up an operation solely to counter the threat of third-party and independent candidates. But recent polling broadly shows Kennedy drawing evenly from both of the major party candidates’ 2020 supporters. And Kennedy’s significantly higher favorable ratings among Republican voters suggests he has more room to eat into Trump’s vote share than Biden’s."

GOP campaign consultant Alice Stewart told Politico, “If the Trump campaign doesn’t see this as a concern, then they’re delusional. They should be looking at this from the standpoint that they can’t afford to lose any voters — and certainly not to a third-party candidate that shares some of [Trump’s] policy ideas.”

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Another GOP strategist, Matthew Bartlett, agreed, saying, “Kennedy was introduced, supported and certainly propped up by the right thinking he would be a torpedo to Biden in a primary. That torpedo may be turning into a bit of a boomerang.”

Kennedy hails from the powerful political family, long a staple in Democratic politics, although the Kennedy family near universally disavows him and backs Biden for re-election.

He has for years embraced many issues dear to Democrats, like environmental conservation. But he has also become a pariah for pushing conspiracy theories against vaccination, often tinged with antisemitism, like that COVID-19 was "ethnically targeted" to spare Jews and that vaccine requirements made people more oppressed than Anne Frank. He also recently spoke in defense of the accused January 6 rioters who are held in jail for allegedly assaulting police, which could further endear him to Trump supporters.

Initially, Kennedy was running in the Democratic primary, which made the prospect of boosting him less risky for Trump surrogates. Now, however, he is running as an independent, has gained ballot access in a few important states including Michigan, and is starting to target Trump voters specifically, making the whole prospect more dicey.